With the rule of law in the U.S. hollowed out, freedom of speech is doomed, accountability ceases and deception and corruption thrive.
September 29, 2025
A Strategic Assessment Memo (SAM) from the Global Ideas Center
You may quote from this text, provided you mention the name of the author and reference it as a new Strategic Assessment Memo (SAM) published by the Global Ideas Center in Berlin on The Globalist.
Frank Vogl is co-founder of Transparency International and author of “The Enablers – How the West Supports Kleptocrats and Corruption-Endangering Our Democracy”tocracycorruption
When the rule of law rests in the hands of one politician with no restraints, then the consequences are manifold and palpable: Freedom of speech is doomed, accountability ceases and the path to deception and corruption is wide open.
As if that weren’t bad enough, the United States is on the way to becoming a police state.
Far worse than constantly grabbing headlines
Virtually every day, Donald Trump makes statements and issues executive orders that grab the headlines, infuriate the Democrats and distract from the corruption that his family clan and its domestic and international satellites unfold with gathering momentum.
A side effect of the acts of extortion directed by the President is to curb opposition speech, intimidate the media and academia, while intervening increasingly in major private sector business decisions and deals to extract funds.
Manifestation of the police state in the Age of Trump
One indisputable manifestation of this police state is Trump directing the U.S. Department of Justice to move fast to criminally charge all people that he views as enemies, starting with former FBI Director James Comey.
Trump has also just announced that he will send the military to Portland, Oregon, presumably to support law enforcement. He does so, even though the Oregon Governor and Portland’s Mayor state that there is absolutely no need and no emergency.
The henchmen of Trump’s immigration police
Across the country, the henchmen of Trump’s immigration police, often wearing masks, grab people off the streets, in court houses, factories and on building sites, lock them up and strive to deport them.
That is a form of extralegal behavior that, aside from parts of Latin America, one is darkly familiar with from despotic, often communist regimes around the world.
Defenestrating the generals?
Not to forget that all U.S. military generals, whether based at home or abroad, have been ordered to a meeting in Washington.
The most charitable interpretation of the move is that they will be told, none too subtly, that if they cannot agree to total loyalty to Donald Trump, then they should resign.
Opening the floodgates of injustice
When it comes to the rule of law, and the vital need for it to be independent of political manipulation, then a line has now been crossed with the Comey indictment. As the editors of The New York Times opined: “With the indictment of James Comey, Donald Trump has opened the floodgates of injustice.”
“This is a real emergency…this is extraordinary,” reacted David Remnick the editor of The New Yorker.
“This speaks of revenge and only revenge and this country looks smaller as Trump places his thumb on the scales of justice,” said Peggy Noonan, a conservative Wall Street Journal columnist.
Trump’s America and the post-Weimar stage
As he worried about the latest news from the White House, so my friend Willem wrote from Holland: “The comparison with the decline of the Weimar Republic and rise of national socialism and its leader is frightening. Good luck to all of us, whether in the United States or Europe.”
I think the comparison might overstate what is happening in Washington now — but not by much.
The time for retribution
Trump’s declared enemies are all people whom, for one reason or another he views as having wronged him in the past.
The current prime target, the former FBI chief Comey, particularly angered Trump when in 2016 the FBI investigated whether Russia had intervened in the U.S. election in that year to support Trump’s victory.
The professional prosecutors ordered to charge Comey refused, so a White House lawyer with no prosecutorial experience was parachuted into court to indict Comey and issue just a two-page charge sheet containing scant details.
Against Nixon, the U.S. Department of Justice still worked
An important bastion against the abuse of public office has long been the Department of Justice. Richard Nixon tried to dictate to the Department and its then Attorney-General and the Deputy Attorney-General refused — they were fired in what history has recorded as the “Saturday Night Massacre” — an event that played a major role in Nixon’s eventual downfall.
The independence of the Justice Department from the White House has now ended. President Trump used his social media account to publicly reprimand Attorney-General Pam Bondi for not moving fast enough to find evidence and criminally charge his enemies. Bondi jumped.
Exerting president power
To add further method to the madness, if the U.S. government shuts down over a budget dispute, which seems most probable, then Trump will take fullest advantage to fire even more civil servants that he does not consider loyal to him.
In the manner of an absolute king, Trump is also likely to transfer funds from many social programs to add resources to support his massive campaign to arrest and deport all “illegal” immigrants. In his view, they are all illegal — irrespective of whether they have court dates to determine their residency claims.
Extortion opportunities expand
The Trump Administration has imposed a $100,000 fee for each special visa that a company seeks in order to bring a foreign expert to work in the United States.
There are thousands of people, mostly from India, holding such visas who work in the major U.S. technology companies — META, Microsoft, Google, Tesla and more. However, the President has reserved the right to personally grant exemptions.
So what donations to Trump’s personal causes will giant U.S. companies have to offer the President to avoid the new fee and bring in those foreign scientists and tech specialists that are essential to their business operations?
Well, for example, personal causes such as the future Trump presidential library — the one that is receiving a super-luxury Boeing 747 that Qatar has gifted Trump.
TikTok friends
President Trump has also signed an executive order for the transfer of ownership of TikTok, the vastly popular social media site, from Chinese control, but few details have been disclosed about just who the new owners will be.
U.S. media reports suggest that shares in the company will be owned, among others, by Oracle’s multi-billionaire founder Larry Ellison, an old friend of Trump, an affiliate of Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News, Michael Dell of Dell Computers, the Silver Lake technology venture capital group, and MGX, the Abu Dhabi wealth fund that has a number of financial ties to Trump family businesses.
There have been press reports that the final deal will involve a payment of “several billions” by the new owners to a U.S. government account.
The world’s second-richest businessman
Ellison, second only to Elon Musk as the world’s richest businessman, has long been a strong Trump supporter. His media interest in TikTok will be alongside the recent acquisition by a company, run by his son, of Paramount pictures.
It secured merger approval by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) only after Paramount’s CBS TV subsidiary paid $16 million to Trump to resolve editorial bias charges brought by the President.
Global financial consequences
A government shut-down and mounting evidence of Trump’s corporate extortion schemes may diminish international investor appetite for the United States. This could gain in speed if Trump’s tariffs are seen to boost domestic inflation and slow economic growth. Trump may not care what the media and the Democrats say about him, but he might worry if the financial markets turn sour.
A sell-off of U.S. government bills and bonds by foreign investors could worry Trump. Given that the United States accounts for nearly 55% of the global equity market, a sharp sell-off of U.S. stocks could trigger not only serious declines in stock markets across the world.
It would also hit his friends’ and major donors’ finances and, to some extent, Trump’s finances. More effective yet, it would hit his ego. Maybe the markets will bring caution to a man who every day seems to lust for ever more political power.
Credit: Adam McCullough / Shutterstock.com